Starved to Death in an American Jail, the Man Who Couldn't Pay $100 Bail

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Routinely homeless, schizophrenic and with an IQ below 55, Larry Eugene Price, Jr., wandered into the small northwest Arkansas police station on August 19, 2020, as he did nearly every day. Police in the town, Fort Smith, were used to seeing Price, then 50, coming in, hanging around for a bit, then leaving.

But on that late summer day, Price, also diagnosed with bipolar disorder and having PTSD, used his finger like a gun to point around the station and at officers, threatening and cursing at those present. Officers, seemingly concerned for his wellbeing and the safety of those in the station, arrested him on a state felony – terroristic threatening in the first degree.

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From then, everything else that could have gone wrong for Price did. His mind lost, his health gone – and seemingly no one paying attention to his wellbeing – Price was dead a year later at 51. He was found in a solitary confinement cell with his eyes wide open, naked, starved, dried saliva on the corners of his mouth, in a pool of standing water so large his feet had shriveled. He had long since had his medication taken away. Toward the end, he had resorted to eating his own feces and drinking his own urine.

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